Friday, November 16, 2012

Saturtainment: Mystery Island (1977)

As we've documented previously, Hanna-Barbera sought to recreate the magic of the Banana Splits with CBS' Skatebirds in 1977, nearly a full decade after the Splits' debut. Unfortunately, it didn't work so well this tme.

The serial part of the show, Mystery Island, wasn't a direct copy of Danger Island, but then again, it came across as a little too B-movie cheesy for viewers to handle. A family is forced to land on a remote island controlled by a crackpot scientist, Dr. Strange (not to be confused with the Marvel hero of the same name), who wants their robot, P.O.P.S. (voice of Frank Welker) as part of his scheme for world domination. Yawn. I think we know how this will end, don't we, kids?

Well, actually, we don't. The series was cancelled without a proper conclusion to the story, if memory serves, unlike Danger Island, which had a definitive ending. It sounds as though the narrator is Sunn Classic Pictures narrator Brad Crandall, but he is not credited according to sources I've read. I should point out that Sunn Classic was, I believe, a sister company to Hanna-Barbera at the time (both owned by Taft Broadcasting), so it would have made sense to fit Crandall into the mix here.

70skidvid uploaded the beginning & ending to the episode, "The Mind Blower". Sorry to say, that's all that is available at the moment.....

No rating. I didn't watch the show. (After all, the Super Friends had my full attention at that hour.)